MY GYPSY CARAVAN
This is a story about a gypsy* caravan, called a roulotte (roo-lut) in French. I came upon it during my first travels abroad in 1978. That’s when I fell in love with France and decided to stay. I studied drawing at the Beaux Arts, sold pots and pans in the street markets of Paris, and made this little roulotte my home along the banks of the Marne River.
Photo Credit: Colette Rofidal, 1979
The letters S.D.F. have special meaning in my life. In French, these initials stand for “Sans Domicile Fixe,” which in English literally translates to ”without a permanent home,” or fixed location. If you look the initials up in the dictionary, you will find that the phrase “S-D-F” (pronounced “s-day-f” ) is defined as a “homeless” person, as any French person will tell you. However, that is not how I came to define it. One day I was working underneath the caravan when I spotted a small shiny cloisonné plaque attached to the chassis. Engraved were the following words:
MADAME NOUVEAU
S.D.F
1938
From that moment on, I was enchanted by the mystery of who this person might be. Where did she travel? What did she do for a living? Europe was on the brink of war in 1938. Did she survive? Eventually, I found out.
*Gens du voyage
1978
This is the first picture of my caravan. I took it long before I knew that one day it would become my home. This scene is rather dismal, but the romance of living in a gypsy caravan captured every bit of my imagination. After my adventures through Europe on trains, on bicycle, and on foot, I returned to France to settle into my new home. The timing was just right. The owner, who had traded his modern caravan for this roulotte ancien had dreams of sailing around the world. He offered to sell the caravan to me so that he could afford to buy a boat. Here it is below:
I wasn’t there when it happened, but was told later on by my friend Jean Lou, that after the boat was finally finished and ready to set sail, it immediately began to take on water and sank to the bottom of the Marne!
Photo credit here goes to my best buddy and life long friend, Chick Foxgrover. Thanks for digging these up!
Roulotte Life
Photographs were far and few in between at this point in time. Weeks went by between letters from family and friends. I didn’t have a telephone, or electricity, and there was no internet or email. I lived by candlelight, finding my own rhythm between night and day, clear skies and rain. Between each of these photos there are a hundred stories.
25 Years later !
When I moved back to the USA in 1981, I had the intention of returning to France every year. What was I thinking?! Doing so turned out to be more difficult than I had imagined. I paid a heavy toll to live in NYC, and my dreamy days of living in France slowly came to an end. I had bigger dreams for myself than living by the side of the Marne, and many of those dreams came true in New York City, but I could never forget where I had been. For me, SDF became a state of mind. Not only did it stand for no fixed location in French, but more importantly, to me, it meant no fixed ideas. It meant keeping an open mind, and always traveling from within. How could that possibly mean “homeless”? I learned the meaning of establishing a home within myself. I learned to believe in myself, and to live by those beliefs as best as I could.
Over the 25 years that passed by, I had gotten married, started a family, opened a studio in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, gone back to school at night, and eventually began teaching. I had to let go of what once was. SDF! Eventually our journey led us to Washington D.C. ( just days before 9-11-2001) to start a new teaching gig. During all this time, my dream caravan fell into the hands of some well-intentioned, and some not so well intentioned inhabitants, and suffered some downright malign events. While maintaining my job in the United States, in 2007 we decided to buy a house in France, in Essoyes. With that in mind, one of the first orders of business was to find my beloved roulotte again. Here is what I found.
At some point in time, my roulotte had undergone an insurrection of workers during the vendange. In their dismay over a dispute about their payment with the vignerons, some of the workers took it upon themselves to seek revenge on the roulotte, which was on vineyard property. After breaking everything they could, destroying the front doors, and stealing all the contents, they pushed the roulotte over on its side and left it for dead in a ditch by the side of the road. When news of its fate came to a good friend of mine, he towed what was left of the caravan to his property in a nearby village. He attempted to preserve what he could, but by the time I arrived, years later, the elements had won the battle. Only a crazy person (or me!) would attempt to restore it. Unfortunately, many things were lost. The worst loss would be my diary and my logbook.
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arrived Home
Essoyes, France
The Restoration Process
The following pictures document the restoration process. The latest interruption, Covid 19, has put me behind another year, but as you will see I am getting near the finish line!
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By this time, much of the roulotte was rotted and needed to be replaced. The original caravan had roll-up windows like in an old automobile, which had been replaced by these ugly modern ones. They had to go! Electricity had also been installed by somebody at some point. I couldn’t wait to rip it out. Candles (bougies) work for me! The glass in the skylights was broken, and most everything from top to bottom needed to be either replaced or repaired. I could have built a new roulotte for the cost of fixing this one, but this one was mine. My old friend.
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The roulotte is made primarily of galvanized sheet metal and wood. The chassis incorporates both wood and steel. As I delved into the restoration process, I noticed many remarkable features designed to enable the caravan to withstand the bumps in the road. Wherever two pieces of wood were joined together, they were mortised, which allows for some give, and relieves stress on the framework. The gentle curves of the roulotte that run vertically from top to bottom along both sides of the caravan gracefully tuck in at the bottom, allowing moisture to roll off, and giving the exterior a soft, poetic presence.
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Using photographs and a few remaining pieces of the original doors, an exact copy was made. New windows were designed to feel like being on an old ship.
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exterior
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interior
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2021
Nothing like a pandemic to get in the way of finishing up my restoration! There is still work to be done, but I am confident that it will be completed soon, as soon as I can get on an airplane to France. Stay tuned for the final phase of this project, where there will not only be a beautiful restoration of the caravan, but all that it represents to me: freedom, remembering to always travel from within, creating, living, loving. And a home.
2023
The day has come and I have finished the restoration of “ma roulotte”!
INVITATION
To the holders of SDF badges, poets, artists and friendly travelers: If you would like to contribute a reflections of your journey, a link, a photo of your keychain, a song, a tattoo, or really anything, I would love to include them here. I am forever grateful for all of your stories, and above all, your friendship.
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Reflections on SDF by former student and friend, Prashant Fonseka.
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PRASHANT FONSEKA
